Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina

Author:Guzel Yakhina [Yakhina, Guzel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786073501
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2019-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

Later, Leibe goes down to the Angara. The inky sky to the east is tinged a delicate blue and pale pink. Dawn is near. A black wave splashes as quietly as a whisper. It’s delightfully empty and clear inside his head, and his body is light and young. His ears are like a wild animal’s, discerning the slightest sounds: the murmur of stones under his feet, a fish tail hitting somewhere in the middle of the river, the noise of spruces in the forest, and the high squeak of a bat. And all kinds of smells – a large body of water, wet grass, earth – swarm in his nostrils.

Leibe sits down by the water and bathes his hands. Either his sharpened vision is noticing or he’s imagining thick, dark blood washing from his fingers and going into the opaque water. He rubs his hands hard until they’re icy-white, until the joints crack. There’s a rustling close by, and it’s the commandant, sitting on the rocks next to him.

“So what happened there?” he asks.

“It turned out to be a boy!” Leibe says emphatically, raising a sharp, long finger.

Ignatov exhales with a gasp and pulls his peaked cap over his face.

“Imagine,” says Leibe, speaking cheerfully, quickly, and freely. “Baby Yuzuf! Just think about that, here, in this damned backwood – Zuleikha and Yuzuf. How about that, eh!”

He looks at the commandant’s hat-covered face and grunts, flustered.

“Tell me,” Ignatov says, taking off the hat and pointing his face into the faintest breath of a breeze. “Without you, would she have … ? I mean, she wouldn’t …”

A wolverine yelps, muted, on the other shore.

“Do you often think about the ‘what ifs’?” Leibe shakes off his hands and an unseen sprinkle flies from his fingers into water as black as tar.

“No.”

“And that’s the right thing.” Leibe stands and looks at his own hands, so white in the darkness. “There’s only what there is. Only what there is.”

He walks back to the camp. He stops on the slope and turns to say, “We left you some soup. Eat.”

Only the fire sentry is dozing when Ignatov climbs up to the knoll. Everyone else has dispersed to the shelters to sleep. He takes the gray folder from a pile of things and opens it, not even noticing the smell of meat coming from the pot, which is still warm. On an empty corner he writes with the charcoal in large, crooked, slanting letters: “Yuzuf.”

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